Security

Firewalls

To start Firestarter automatically, alter the /etc/sudoers file and add
Firestarter as a startup program.

Open a terminal from the menu "Applications" -> "Accessories" ->
"Terminal" and paste the line below:

$ export EDITOR=gedit && sudo visudo

Add this line at the very end of the /etc/sudoers file:

username ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/firestarter

Replace username with your Ubuntu login name, and save your changes.

Next, so that the firestarter GUI will start each time you login, go to
"System" -> "Preferences" -> "Sessions", and create a new "StartUp
Program" by clicking "New". Put Firestarter as the name, and enter in
the "command" textbox field:

sudo /usr/sbin/firestarter --start-hidden

Now, Firestarter will appear on your system tray each time you login.
However, by default, each time you configure and close Firestarter, it
will disappear from your system tray again! To prevent this undesirable
default behavior, enable Firestarter's "Minimize to tray on window close"
feature:

Open Firestarter from "System" -> "Administration" -> "Firestarter".

Click the "Preferences" button and the make sure "Interface" is selected
in the left pane.

Check the check box to the left of "Minimize to tray on window close".

Click the "Accept" button.

Note – If one application can't connect as it should (like SMB access),
check first that these accesses are not blocked by the firewall.

Lastly, right-click anywhere and select "New" -> "Integer". Name it
nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set its value to 0 (zero). This value is
the amount of time (in milliseconds) the browser waits before displaying the
page.

Web monitoring

WebMon (Windows) is a Web page update monitoring program – it saves you time
and keeps you updated by automatically checking pages (or parts of them) to
see if they have changed.

Open the "Tools" -> "Preferences" menu, and adapt its default "Automation"
settings in order to:

WordWeb (Windows) is a free English thesaurus and dictionary, and can be
used to look up words from within almost any program in just one click. It
works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the
Wikipedia encyclopedia.

Electronics

FTP-Client

FileZilla (Linux, Windows) is a fast and reliable FTP client with lots of
useful features and an intuitive interface.

By default, photos are copied to your library directory (the Pictures
directory in your home directory). The Import From Folder dialog contains a
checkbox "Copy files to Pictures photo library"; if you clear this checkbox
then photos will not be copied.

sudo aptitude install html2ps

Inkscape (Linux, Windows) is a Vector Graphics Editor, similar to Adobe
Illustrator and CorelDraw, that strives to be SVG Compliant, open source,
responsive and extensible.

Also, it allows to transform a bitmap into a smooth, scalable image, by
calling Potrace (which is now integrated in Inkscape).

And there is Inkscape to TikZ exporter, an excellent Inkscape extension for
exporting SVG paths as TikZ/PGF paths (for use with LaTeX).

sudo aptitude install graphviz graphviz-doc

Dia (Linux, Windows) is a diagram creation program inspired by the
commercial Windows program Visio, though more geared towards informal
diagrams for casual use. It has several shape packages for different needs:
flowcharting, network diagrams, circuit diagrams, etc.

Internet-Telephony

Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use
all of your IM accounts at once.

Ekiga Softphone:

sip1.voipbuster.com
stun.voipbuster.com

Media-Players

Audacity

Video Player

Instead of getting "Totem cannot play this type of media (DVD) because it does not have the appropriate plugins to be able to read from the disc"
messages, use Kaffeine which excels at playing video files:

You can use pdfopt (from Ghostscript) to linearize the PDF (also known as
"PDF optimization"), so that Acrobat Reader can start showing the first
pages while the rest is still being downloaded, making PDF files more
suitable for online browsing.

AREnable (Windows) is a small tool to enable some features in PDF files for
the Adobe Acrobat Reader like commenting, adding notes, etc.

Sumatra PDF (Windows) is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer. It has a
minimalistic design, but it's small and starts up very fast. It's designed
for portable use: it's just one file with no external dependencies so you
can easily run it from external USB drive.

For a number of technical reasons, including the ability to process EPS
files, it is recommended to use GhostWord (instead of Adobe Acrobat
PDFWriter) to produce PDF documents directly from Microsoft Word and other
Microsoft Office applications.

Choose "Start" -> "Settings" -> "Printers" and double-click on "Add
Printer". Choose "local printer" connected to the "File" port (i.e., the
printer is not actually connected to your PC – it will just print to a
file).

Another alternative is deskPDF (Windows) which allows you to create
professional PDF documents from any application you are used to work with by
just sending the document to print through the deskPDF virtual printer.

System-Tools

Don't forget, as well, to turn on ClearType (Windows, see Desktop
Properties -> Appearance -> Effects) to smooth edges of characters
displayed on the screen…

Email checker

Mail Notification monitors your mailboxes for new mail. It is configurable
(via gconf-editor): advanced users are provided with ways to run
commands in reaction to events, and so on.

sudo aptitude install mail-notification

File managers

Filelight (Linux) shows your file-system as a set of concentric
pie-charts.

sudo aptitude install filelight

gt5 is a little tool to find out where all the disk space is going over time, by showing all files in a directory and also calculating the size
of sub-trees:

sudo aptitude install gt5

Backup

Unison (Linux, Windows) is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and
Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories
to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host),
modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the
changes in each replica to the other.

sudo aptitude install unison

If you have to downgrade it (because of versions difference on the client
and server machines), use for example:

SyncBack (Windows) helps you easily backup and synchronize your files to
the same drive, a different drive or medium (CDRW, CompactFlash, etc), an
FTP server, a Network or… a Zip archive. To go fast, it compares the
source and the target before starting the copy.

sitecopy (Linux) is for easily maintaining remote web sites. The program
will upload files to the server which have changed locally, and delete
files from the server which have been removed locally, to keep the remote
site synchronized with the local site with a single command.

Beep Generation

Control the PC speaker within shell scripts, notifying the user when
something interesting occurs.

sudo aptitude install beep

Check that the PC speaker is not muted!

System Tray

With AllTray (Linux), you can dock any application with no native tray
icon (such as terminal programs) into the system tray.

Text-Editors

Typesetting

Scribus (Linux, Windows) is a program that brings professional page layout
with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page
layout. It supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color,
separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation. It rivals
programs like Publisher, and is useful for making marketing fliers and
brochures.

Others

System Utilities

Virtual CD-ROM drives

Daemon Tools is "ad-supported", but it's possible not to install the "ad"
program (unselect it when installing).

System Utilities

Process Explorer (Windows) provides much more insight into the way Windows
and applications work than Task Manager does (per-process CPU and memory
graphs). It also shows you information about which handles and DLLs
processes have opened or loaded.

EVEREST Home Edition (Windows) is a system information, system diagnostics
and benchmarking solution for home PC users. It offers accurate system
information and diagnostics capabilities, including memory benchmarks,
hardware monitoring, and low-level hardware information.

WCPUID/XCPUID (Windows) is a program that displays the CPU information of
your personal computer. Shows Frequency, Multiplier, Chipset Info, etc.

Macro scripting

Under Ubuntu: xbindkeys.
Under Kubuntu: Input Actions.

AutoHotkey (Windows) allows you to automate almost anything by sending
keystrokes and mouse clicks.

Example:

The hotkeys Win+G and Win+W are configured (in the file `=c:/Program
Files/AutoHotkey/AutoHotkey.ini=') to launch GNU Emacs and Mozilla Firefox,
respectively.

<example>
</example>

Search tools

Tracker Search

Tracker is a desktop search application which allows you to quickly
search your documents, photos, music, and other files. It is now
included in Ubuntu Gutsy.

To customize the settings for Tracker, you have to type in
"tracker-preferences" from a terminal. This opens up another window with
option tabs for "General", "Performance", "Files", Ignored Files" and
"Emails" tabs.